


Warmth

by mosttroubledbird (howlikeagod)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Fluff and Smut, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Multi, Polyamory, arguably canon speculation about lizardman genitals, i don't know how many ways i can tag 'there is lizard dick in this', i'm not a scalie but i'm also not a coward, second citadel, uhh reptile anatomy?, written pre-Moonlit Hermit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:25:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11979177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/mosttroubledbird
Summary: Sir Damien is a married man. The queen and the knights and the irritating pair of brothers with the disturbingly intelligent horse know Rilla well; they were all in attendance at the marriage ceremony, once it finally happened. Sir Angelo cried.None of them are lied to about Sir Damien’s domestic bliss. They simply have a less than complete picture of it.





	Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> look I really am sorry about this but you know somebody had to do it eventually

Sir Damien hasn’t slept in the knight’s barracks in a very long time.

He’s a married man, now, which means his fellow knights and his queen fully respect and support his decision to commute from Rilla’s cottage. The fact that he has been kicked out of those same barracks on no less than four occasions for his and Sir Angelo’s… antics… is conveniently forgotten. Wooden walls are easily rebuilt, and it’s hardly of consequence these days anyway.

Again, Sir Damien is a married man. The queen and the knights and the irritating pair of brothers with the disturbingly intelligent horse know Rilla well; they were all in attendance at the marriage ceremony, once it finally happened. Sir Angelo cried.

None of them are lied to about Sir Damien’s domestic bliss. They simply have a less than _complete_ picture of it.

On nights like tonight, for example, Sir Damien does not stay in the cottage of his wife. Rilla’s experiments are sometimes delicate and she needs her space to work, to focus, to burn six candles all night because she keeps forgetting to move the last one to her other work station before lighting another.

She sends him off with a kiss and a swat to the rear that means, as clear as if she’d said it, “I love you, but go bother Arum.”

So he does.

A slick spattering of rain has started down on the leafy roof of Lord Arum’s abode in the Swamp of Titans’ Blooms. Damien warms his hands on a cup of a strange tea he’s acquired the taste for as of late; it’s the only tea Arum knows how to brew. Lord Arum would never admit as much, of course. Rather, he says it’s the only kind of tea _worth_ brewing, and Damien indulges him.

“Rilla says she’s found a compound in some local vines that might be useful for the treatment of mumps,” Damien says by way of conversation.

“She wouldn’t have to work with such small samples, if she would only accept my help,” Arum hisses. His feelings for Rilla are all grudging respect and a fondness he’d never voice. Even when his tail twitches with interest in her work, he must needs find something to complain about. It’s in his nature, monstrous or otherwise, that Damien continues to find inexplicably charming.

“Her samples are not the problem, I believe, Lord Arum,” Damien lays his head on a scaly shoulder; Arum has been drifting closer ever since the rain started, “but I’m certain your help would be… ah… helpful, were she not so dedicated to the purity of her science.”

Even Arum has to grumble in agreement. His cutting remarks about how backward humans are, intellectually, proved no match for Rilla’s medicinal genius when they finally stopped trying to kill each other long enough to talk.

Damien finishes his tea before it’s tepid--a first. Not long after, there is one long arm draped around his shoulders, then another around his waist, then a tail over his lap and a frilled throat leaning against the top of his head.

“Arum?” Damien murmurs. The moment is too tender for him not to pitch his voice low and soft. He turns his head slowly, until the edge of Arum’s thin membrane of skin and scales lays against his cheek. He leans closer, runs his lips along the folds of it. Arum tenses around him as Damien whispers, “are you cold?”

There’s a soft hiss and a rattle beneath the skin where Damien is pressing slow kisses now, lips catching against scales.

“I don’t--” he lets out a rush of air that Damien might readily call a sigh. “--waste my time making heat out of my own body, like some.” And Damien has to laugh, because no one but his ridiculous, pompous lizard would accuse not only the entire human race, but a long list of animals Damien could name, of _wasting time_ with basic body functions just to keep his dignity.

Arum’s frill puffs out at Damien’s laughter. He looks affronted, but Damien reaches up to wrap an arm around Arrum and he practically melts back into the warmth of him.

A third hand has made its way to Damien’s hair. Claws scratch gently, carefully, against his scalp, and the sensation sends a tremor down his spine. He returns to pressing his mouth to Arum’s slowly opening frill. He’s sensitive there, enjoys the sensation immensely, and as much as Damien would love to kiss Arum the way he kisses Rilla, reptilian mouths aren’t made for the same expressions of affection. This is not a disappointment; it’s only a question he never thought to ask before, but there is an answer.

There is an answer, or two, or a half dozen he hasn’t had the bravery to give yet. But right now there are sighs and heavy breaths, and more arms around Damien than he can count--in the poetic sense. In reality, he knows it is four, and all four hold him tight, safe and solid and strong.

Damien is flat on his back on what is really more of a soft woven mat than a bed. It takes up a great deal of floorspace in Arum’s home, perfect for a lizard lord to sprawl leisurely in the swamp he rules. Damien giggles at the image, a little breathless and giddy.

“I-- I must speak my heart,” Damien begins. Arum raises one brow.

“Must you?” One palm traces down Damien’s chest. “I know you are a poet, honeysuckle, but not every occasion demands you open your mouth.”

“I do not need to speak, if you do not wish it,” Damien replies, flushed hot in his cheeks, “but my mouth is open, Lord Arum.”

Arum blinks down at him. It’s strangely gratifying, catching him off guard like this. Two long, clever fingers reach out, trace along Damien’s jaw and cheek to rest at his mouth. Damien, as good as his word, parts his lips for them.

Arum’s fingers slide across his tongue: rougher scales than his frill and careful, careful not to draw blood with those claws. Arum’s other hands start pulling at Damien’s clothes, and Damien responds in kind, while those fingers pump in and out softly, slowly, an intrusion Damien is unaccustomed to but one that is very welcome indeed.

Arum has to pull his fingers out to get Damien shirtless. Damien’s eyes pop open--he cannot remember closing them, though it must have been at some point after Arum’s tunic came off--and he blinks up into amethyst eyes.

Damien is a poet. He writes ballads for his fellow knights and sonnets for his wife and limericks for the tavern keeper, when he's had enough wine. Here and now, he has trouble finding words for what he feels for Arum. Poetry, he supposes, is for humanity. There is no rhyme scheme made for loving and being loved by a monster of a man-- a man of a monster? No, simply a monster, plain and true and huffy and stubborn and grand.

Saint Damien above, he might have something monstrous in him after all, one way or another.

The moment his last garment falls away, Arum pounces.

The arm around Damien’s back tightens until he and Arum are chest-to-chest. One clawed hand grabs ahold of Damien’s ass and pulls him close until he has to throw a leg around Arum’s waist. There is still a hand in his hair, tighter now and pulling with a sweet tension that makes Damien let out a long sigh. Arum’s thin, quick tongue dances over Damien’s shoulder, his throat. Damien is hard, aching between his own body--running feverish with this sudden flood of sensation--and Arum’s--warmed by their proximity, but still cooler than his own or Rilla’s ever is. He can feel answering hardness against him, and that is yet another startling thought.

Damien and Arum have bared themselves to one another before. Now is not their first foray into an intimacy of this nature; there has been cautious exploration and touch and pleasure between them. But he lacks the comfortable familiarity with Arum that he has with Rilla, or even might have with a man who looked more-- More as Damien looks, might be the most delicate way of putting it.

He still shivers with a wave of pleasure and expectation. Arum nips at his shoulder, teeth as sharp as his claws but just as careful, and Damien cries out a sharp, warbling _“Ah.”_

“Is,” Arum pants, “your mouth still open for me, honeysuckle?”

“Y-yes,” Damien swears. He has little time to fall into the whirlpool of his own thoughts about the matter, because Arum scrambles forward to straddle his chest in the time between one breath and the next. His speed, that’s it, another item on the list of so many things about Lord Arum that make Damien’s heart pound. Hadn’t he said once that the sound of it made his stomach growl? Damien has proof before him now that he still has quite a visceral effect on Arum.

And there is the proof, hanging heavy and ready to be taken in his mouth: two blood-flushed organs, paired and symmetrical, ridged with long grooves along the sides and twitching as Arum looks down at Damien.

Rilla had given him a short lesson on reptile anatomy the first time he came home from a stay at Lord Arum’s, stammering and red in the face. He imagines Arum must have had a similar reaction to his cock, though the lizard lord is too proud to bring it up.

And not all strangeness is unpleasant, this much he has learned. So Damien arcs his neck forward and wraps his lips around one of the waiting organs. 

Damien is getting much better at translating Arum’s sounds; this long _tktktktktk,_ he is almost certain,is warm and approving. The clawed fingers in his hair pull again just as Arum’s hips shift forward. Damien opens his mouth wider willingly, letting Arum sink deeper into him with a heavy breath and a grateful hiss. He worries, momentarily, that the angle will be difficult on his neck if he has to keep bobbing forward to take him in and out; Arum solves that problem when two of his hands slam down onto the mat and close like shackles around Damien’s wrists while the one in his hair pulls him where Arum desires.

Damien groans and lets his neck go limp. Arum seems to enjoy that, thrusting into Damien’s cheek with a hiss that sounds like a _“yes.”_ He notices his own whining dimly, as if from a distance, as if pleading Arum for more--and Arum is happy to oblige. Only Damien’s legs are free; they twitch and kick with every sharp push of Arum fucking his mouth, quick as a whip like everything he does. The other organ slides against his face, and he briefly entertains a thought about what he might do in the future, with his hands unbound.

Another quick thrust and Damien nearly chokes. It’s not entirely regrettable.

Damien’s brow is furrowed, equal parts concentration on the task at hand and mounting pleasure he feels in his whole body. To be held down by a creature stronger and faster and more innately deadly than Damien could ever be, and yet to know in every moment that he is _safe,_ that this is an expression of trust for both of them--

Arum’s breath comes in quick pants, now, and Damien digs his heels into the mat beneath him. He feels the tension in his abdomen, the way Arum’s tail swipes through the air restlessly enough to break something, were his aesthetic sensibilities less austere. He’s sprinting toward an edge, toward a cliffside and Damien is dying to catch him.

When Arum reaches that release, his frill fans out and he rattles a long, harsh sound. Damien’s face is covered in his come, from the organ hanging beside his face that paints a streak across his cheek and collar bone as well as what he cannot keep in his mouth.

Arum pulls back, releases his grip in Damien’s hair, takes his hands from Damien’s wrists. Damien’s head thuds softly against the mat. He gasps: great, clean lungfuls of air that smell like earth and water, like the way plants breathe after rain, like Arum.

“Damien,” Arum says. His sharp, gemstone eyes follow a path down Damien’s body, trekking over his faithful heart, and take in what Damien had nearly forgotten.

Two hands close over the curve of his hips. Another pulls him upright and closer, until he practically sits in Arum’s lap. And the last, the last closes around him, the first proper touch there all evening, and Damien nearly chokes again. Arum does not break eye contact with Damien, and Damien would not look away for the world, as the smooth glide of scales rubs along him on the upstroke, then their minute ridges catch him on the down. He feels raw and open, untamed, not a knight nor a man nor a beast. 

Claws sharper than knives could cut him on every side, but he feels no fear. He shudders and shakes apart in Arum’s arms, crying out until his voice breaks and then all the sound in the world is breathing and the gentle patter of rain.

They rinse off in Arum’s (really quite clever, he ought to see about having something like this built in the Citadel) rainwater collection system. It’s a basin and several gutters and pulleys, a feat of engineering that Arum insists a child could invent but Damien has no head for.

“Would you--” Damien starts uncertainly while they dry off inside. He clears his throat. “Lord Arum. I must speak my heart.”

“By all means, honeysuckle,” Arum replies from where he has curled around Damien like a dragon with a hoard. His head rests on Damien’s lap, eyes closed.

“Well, it is-- You see, Rilla and I were-- Of course you know--”

“Were this one of your poems, you would have just scrapped three drafts in as many seconds.”

Damien takes a deep breath, prays for tranquility, and begins again.

“Rilla and I are married.”

“Yes?”

“We were married in the Citadel, in the presence of the Queen and our friends--well, my friends and her friends, they don’t overlap a great deal, strangely enough--” Arum opens one eye and Damien rushes to the point. “You and I cannot… Cannot wed in such a way.”

Arum’s face is stony and unreadable.

“But,” Damien continues. He feels the panic begin, familiar and unknown all at once, but Arum reaches out one hand and places it over Damien’s heart. He breathes a little slower. “I had meant to ask if you, Lord Arum of the Swamp of Titans’ Blooms, would care for a smaller ceremony. Just… Just Rilla, would be there. And any monsters you might know, if you’d like, although from the way you talk of them I assume they might not be ideal guests. And myself, of course, because what I mean to say, Lord Arum,” he swallows audibly, “would you consider… getting married, in a manner of speaking… to, ah… me?” By the time he reaches the last word, his voice has risen to a squeak.

Arum unfurls himself from Damien until he can crouch in front of him. Their eyes are level, though Damien’s dart back and forth between both of Arum’s. He wrings his hands and thinks, _tranquility, tranquility, your tranquility--_

Until Arum leans forward and, in a clumsy but clearly intentional manner, kisses Damien on the mouth. His lips are thin and dry, his face entirely the wrong shape, but Damien feels himself flutter all the same.

“That… sounds acceptable,” Arum says, and Damien thinks that perhaps tranquility is not always the solution, if feelings such as this are the alternative.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting Mikaela Buckley on Patreon, since this was pretty transparently based on a sketch she posted recently.


End file.
